Hagsfiend or Crowl?
by Raven AKA Birdsteeth
Summary: It's been two years since Coryn's death and life in the tree is calm. However far from the great tree and over a vast ocean an egg is hatching. Inside is a creature not seen on Earth in a thousand years: a hagsfiend. But is this the crowl the newest face of evil? Or is there someone even more sinister on the horizon?
1. Prologue

**Authors Note:** _Sigh... Short pologue is short. Ok, fair warning: this is my first story and I started it two years ago. I want to get back into it and I feal that if I start to upload it that'll help leave reviews and response for me. Updates might be slow but i want to finish this project! :D _

In a faraway corner of the Panqua Palace, in a small storage room, rarely used, a dragon owl named Bethset was hatching an egg.

She, a young (by dragon owl standards) turquoise dragon owl, had laid it earlier and stayed in one place having her preeners and servants come to her so that no one would find the egg. Then when she sensed the time was near she had brought the egg here. Now she impatiently waited for the egg to hatch. _When_, she wondered, _**when**__ will this thing hatch? _Being a dragon owl she was inherently impatient and self-absorbed. _I could be being preened right now_, she thought.

Now the egg was starting to tremble. _Finally_, she thought as she got off the egg. The only reason she had kept the egg instead of letting the attendants take it away was her belief that the chick would serve her, preen her, adore her. _It will be _my_ chick, I will have raised it. No lowly servant is good enough for me. No, my son of royal dragon owl blood! He shall be my servant. _She had thought. But already her plan seemed to be a poor one.

The chick had finally managed to peck its way out of its shell and lay in the poor nest Bethset had made. _Ugh! Why is it so bald? And covered in slime! _Bethset managed to wipe off the chick with a cloth from the storage room. Bethset realized that she didn't know what to do next. The chick looked up at his mother and started to toddle toward her. Bethset backed away, slightly disgusted that this was to be her servant. _Why is he_ ( for she could now see that it was a boy) _coming to me? Does he want something? _Never having done any work in her life Bethset wanted to call for a servant to help her but knew that she could not.

Instead, then, she spent a few minutes looking through the storage room and bringing items to the chick trying to find out what it wanted. After a while she got hungry. _Maybe that's what it needs?_ She speculated. _Food? _After a little more searching she found a store of dried caterpillars which she brought out to the chick. Bethset sighed, already tired of having a chick. Who knew it would be so much work? However she was still lured by the thought of her own servant, of her blood. So before she left she spoke her first words to the chick.

"Hello, my son. I am Bethset. When you have grown up you will be able to serve me. You will bring me great honor." And then she left, momentarily forgetting about the hagsfiend she'd just hatched.


	2. Chapter 2- Names

**Author's Note: You can all thank** _mbh040 _**for this chapter. Like I said last chapter I do have several written already I just don't have them typed. XD School's kept me extremely busy and I know that's a pretty weak excuse as many writer's manage to keep school and writing juggled but I do feel that my first obligation is to my grades. However your attention **_mbh040_ **has really gotten me back into this and I thank you for that. Your the kind of reader and reviewer that I need. So I hope this inspires all my other readers to review. Look what happens when you do! This chapter may be short and so will the following ones be. So, just for you I will try to upload two chapters today. How does that sound? :D**

**Chapter 1- Names**

The chick watched as Bethset walked away. _Why is she leaving?_ He wondered. His mum had called herself Bethset._ Should I have a name, too?_ He was confused. His mother had seemed confused too, hadn't known he that he was asking for food. And why were the caterpillars she gave him so dry? Just then he heard voices coming down the hall towards his storage room. Still confused, and now a little scared, he hid in his nest. He couldn't help but wondering if all nests were this scratchy and lumpy.

"We'll need these kites for the Kyre festival." A deep voice said. Then two blue owls walked in the room.

"What's the Kyre festival?" Asked the second owl in a smaller voice. If the chick had known about the different types of owl species he would have known the larger blue owl with the deep voice to be a great gray and the smaller owl to be a northern sahwet.

"It's some new festival praising the 'glory' of the dragon owls. They'll have all the dragon owls flying on kites while we sing praise songs to them." The great gray said.

"Oh, I should have known. Let's hurry with these kites then, before the dragon owls start getting cranky." The attendants left, leaving the chick alone again.

He didn't understand much of what was said but he was able to catch a few things: His mum, Bethset, was a dragon owl; she wanted him to praise her; and that he didn't know how to speak. He decided then and there that he was going to learn more about all of these things.

...

"Ahhh! Bee!"

Bethset had come back hours later to find the chick making random annoying noises. It was then that she realized that the chick did not already know how to talk. She sighed. This chick thing was going to be more work than she had thought it would be. To make it easier, maybe she could try doing just one lesson a day- the alphabet, sounds, words. _Yes, that might work,_ she thought,_ it would be easier_. But how to start?

"Uh, alright, chick. Time to learn. If you o well, you may some day be as smart as I am." She puffed out her chest proudly. "Ok? Make alphabet sounds." Bethset herself didn't really know what the alphabet looked like or what all the letters were but she found this unimportant.

The chick immediately began burbling out sounds trying to copy her. _This may work_, she thought. Bethset worked half-heartedly to teach the chick what she knew about the alphabet but was often distracted and bored. However the chick took the initiative and learned fast even with this poor teaching.

Lessons like this went on for five to fifteen minutes whenever Bethset decided to come. The chick grew quickly and learned to find the dried caterpillars whenever he was hungry.

But still Bethset had not given him a name. And almost worse than that was the fact that she wasn't teaching him to branch- but this was because she herself did not fly. She had not given him a name because as this chick was only being raised to become her personal servant it did not require a name. She had never bothered to learn the names of any of the other servants. However she made sure her son, her own blood worthy of serving her, heard her name plenty enough as she loved to hear him say it, thinking it was like the praise she loved to receive.

A week later and the chick was now fully fledged and quite a bit larger than before. He had deep black feathers and bright yellow eyes like two moons in the darkest hour of the night. He had quickly learned to speak and loved to play with words and sounds.

"Rrrr-ock! Ckk! Bluuuueee!" He said practicing and playing with his latest lesson.

"Hey, mum?" The chick asked.

"Yes?" Bethset wondered what the chick would ask. It wasn't often that servants addressed her and she did not feel that they should.

"What is my name? N-n-name?" He asked still playing with his words.

She was surprised by this question. _Wasn't he her servant? Hadn't she taught him that? _She had no experience raising chicks and did not know what to say. Finally she managed to say, "I did not give you one." The chick frowned.

"But shouldn't I have one? You do." Once again Bethset was baffled. _Why should he? He is to be my servant. Why would he even ask?_ She couldn't even think of anything to say so she stood there, staring at her son. The chick continued.

"I think I should. I want to be... Kyre!" It was the first thing he could think of and he loved the sound of this word: the sharp K with the long I and the odd sounding R that tickled his tongue.

Bethset overcame he shock and said. "Sure. What a lovely name." She thought she understood what was happening now. Servants probably came up with names on their own so they could call themselves something. She didn't have to know or care it was just for servants, right? Plus, what could be a better name for her son than the name of the Royal Kyre Festival that celebrated and praised her high status as a dragon owl. _Could there be a better name for a servant?_ She thought. And she truly believed that.

And though Kyre knew nothing of the great rituals of owls that celebrated the milestones of growing chicks he knew that something special and important had happened. He had a name now, a name that would mark him forever.

**Author's Note: Ok, this may need some clarification- in other words I don't want to see twenty reviews commenting on this. THis chapter reveals an important headcanon of mine: hagsfiends age, or at least grow up, very fast. And there is some evidence of this from the books- Nyra expected the hagsfiends she was hatching to be able to fight and fly soon after they hatched- her plan hinged on this. However my headcanon is that Nyra had her facts just a little mixed up and instead of them being grown up soon after hatching it actually takes closer to a week for a hagsfiend to grow up, which is still very fast. I made this change so that my story would flow a little better and it makes a little more sense to me.**

**However feel free to review me about anything else. I love reviews and they really do help me to get things done!**


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